sting near my elbow.

"There—that's that!" he said. "Now we'll take you back and get the others."

I swore at him coldly and viciously.

He smiled.

Alex helped lay me back on my bed in the tree house. He looked down at me and grinned. It wasn't a pleasant grin. It reminded me of a crocodile.

Naked, I was standing on an endless sandy plain. Off in the distance the Two Two Four stood on her landing jacks, a tall, needle-pointed tower of burnished silver metal. The sun beat down from a cobalt sky burning my bare back as I trudged painfully across the hot shifting sand. My feet, scorched and blistered, sent agony racing through me with every step I took toward the tall silver column that seemed to recede from me as fast as I approached. My throat was choked with dust and my mind filled with fear and pain.

I had to reach the ship. I had to. Yet I knew with dreadful certainty that I would not.

He came at me from a hollow in the sandy ground, a huge, furry Lyranian—bigger than any I had seen. His white tusks glittered in the sunlight as he leaped at me.

Twisting, I avoided him and turned to run. To fight that mountain of fanged flesh was futile. He could rip me apart with one hand. But I moved with viscid slowness, stumbling through the shifting sands.

In a moment he was upon me, clutching with his huge hands, snapping at my throat with his tusked mouth. Fear pumped adrenalin into my system and I fought as I had never fought before, breaking his holds, throwing jarring punches into his fanged face as he clawed and bit at me.

With a violent effort I broke away and ran again toward the safety of the distant ship. For a moment I left him behind as he scrambled to regain his feet and came running after me. He was on me again, hands reaching for my throat. I couldn't get away. And again we fought, battering and clawing at each other, using fists, feet and teeth, biting and gouging. His strength was terrible and his hot, fetid breath was rank in my nostrils. With a grunt of triumph he tripped me and I fell on my back on the blazing sand. I screamed as my back struck the searing surface, but he held me helpless and immovable, pinned 

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